Description

“THIS TRAIN IS BOUND FOR GLORY, THIS TRAIN!”: BOUND FOR GLORY, INSCRIBED BY WOODY GUTHRIE

GUTHRIE, Woody. Bound for Glory. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1943. Octavo, original black cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition, second issue, of the legendary folk singer’s autobiographical account of his Dust Bowl years, the only book he published in his lifetime, inscribed, “Best Regards from Modern Book Store, Chicago. Woody Guthrie, 9-23-44,” dated the year he first recorded “This Land Is Your Land.”

“Woody Guthrie, who wrote more than 1,000 songs that echoed the glory and travail of American life? used his scarred guitar to sing out against injustice and? sing of the beauty of his homeland? In 1943 he wrote Bound for Glory, an odyssey of his life, a book that Orville Prescott, in the New York Times, said had ‘more triple-distilled essence of pure individual personality in it than any in years” (New York Times). Inscribed by Guthrie at Chicago’s progressive Modern Book Store while campaigning for Roosevelt as a touring member of the Roosevelt Bandwagon. First edition, second issue (one month after first issue), illustrated with frontispiece portrait and Guthrie’s own sketches.

Text fine, mild foxing to endpapers, light edge-wear to extremely good book; mild dampstaining, closed tears, chipping with loss to spine ends and corners, some tape reinforcement to scarce price-clipped dust jacket, very good. Scarce inscribed.